CHAPTER I

There was, on the shore of Lake Champlain and close to the Canadian border, a certain house. In this house, forgotten from disuse, in the drawer of a maple smoking stand, was a gun. Its make and type were a Colt automatic, caliber .25.

There was, in the City of New York, a certain man. He was influential both politically and financially. He was, as well, a man of family. One winter morning he said to the commissioner of police at the conclusion of a detailed and confidential statement, “I need the best man you’ve got.”

The commissioner said, “I agree with you. You do.”

They sat and looked at each other for a while.

“It will be difficult,” the man said. “I can’t advise—my natural, my normal inclination, frankly, is to kill—but we can’t do that.”

Their smiles were wintry.

“No,” the commissioner said, “we can’t do that.”

“Delicacy—the thinnest ice—there must be no arrest, of course. I’d be involved. What a pity we haven’t retained the attitude as well as the lore of the Borgias.”

“You appreciate the basic obstacle, of course?”

“Of course: getting him into the community.”

“And into the house.”

“Can it be done?”

The commissioner smiled again. “Valcour?” The man stirred heavily in his chair. “A lieutenant, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Handled that Endicott business, you know.”

“I know.”

The man considered this for a while. “He won’t have any official standing up there.”

“He could have.”

“How?”

“Several ways. Why bother? I’ll attend to it. Get the district attorney at the county seat to deputize him—the sheriff’s office—oh, any number of ways.”

The man frowned and emphasized his words carefully. “No one must know what he’s up there for. There must be no publicity.”

“There won’t be any.”

“How will he fit?” the man said.

“Up there?”

“Yes.”

“He was born in Canada.”

“Returning-tothe-scenes-of-his-childhood thing?”

“Well, near them if not to them. It had better be for his health. The hunting season’s over, I imagine, except for rabbits. Roger’s Landing, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the nearest village to it?”

“How should I know?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The commissioner waved a manicured finger in a circle. “He’ll circle about, you see, and then work in. Valcour works in circles. They’re walls, really, that he builds around the thing he’s out to do.”

The man’s fingers were inclined to pudginess. Their hold on the cigar he was smoking was unsteady. “It ought to be quick,” he said.

“It’ll be quick.”